Radius: Decade

May 14 - June 14, 2020

Live Performance + Opening Reception

On The Quarantine Concerts:

Thursday, May 14, 2020 At 6PM CDT

 

Radius is an experimental radio broadcast platform established in 2010 that produces, exhibits, and distributes work by radio and transmission artists from around the world. Radius provides artists with live and experimental formats in radio programming and features new episodes by artists who use radio as a primary element in their work. The goal is to support work that engages the tonal and public spaces of the electromagnetic spectrum. http://theradius.us

“Slowness [...] allows us to experience our present with all its different speeds, and in all its complexity and diversity.” - Lutz Koepick The Aesthetics and Politics of Slowness: A Conversation

Radius’ new exhibition DECADE examines slowness, calling attention to radio’s relationship to time. In this celebratory moment, Radius will present new commission works by Hali Palombo and DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult, as well as a new 24/7 FM and online broadcast exhibition of the Radius Library and Episode archives.

Radius Episodes 91 and 92 are new episodes commissioned specifically for the Experimental Sound Studios’ presentation of DECADE. Episode 91 features a video installation to be viewed outside ESS’s Audible Gallery, a live performance, and broadcast of Hali Palombo’s GRAND DETOUR, a slow-scan television broadcast and soundscape depicting 32 desolate Midwestern scenes. Empty malls, weathered parking structures, shuttered toll booths and other cast-offs are revealed line-by-line via slow scan television, an increasingly obsolete method of image transmission via radio signal.

DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult’s The Gold Line will be featured as Episode 92. “The gold line” is a nick-name for the physical route that high frequency algorithms make between the New York and Chicago stock exchanges via a network of microwave radio radio repeaters. This episode documents a ‘slow’ road trip following these microwave repeater outposts and their surroundings using image and sound, learning about past and present uses of these transmission towers that are both a material memorial to radio history, and a physical reminder of passing time.

Radius DECADE broadcasts live throughout the run of the exhibition from May 14, 2020 until June 14, 2020 locally on 87.9-FM in West Edgewater neighborhood, 89.7-FM in Heart of Chicago neighborhood, and streaming online 24/7 at http://theradius.us. 

Radius DECADE premieres May 14, 2020 at 6:00 PM CDT on ESS’s The Quarantine Concerts with live performances and screening by Hali Palombo and DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult.

Events:

May 14, 2020 at 6:00 PM CDT

Exhibition Opening Reception on ESS’s The Quarentine Concerts

Live performances and screening by Hali Palombo and DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult

Saturdays - 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM CDT

Radius Episode 92: DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult: The Gold Line

Live FM Broadcast

Sundays 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM CDT

Episode 91: Hali Palombo GRAND DETOUR

Live FM Broadcast and Video Installation*

* On view 24/7 through the windows at ESS’ Audible Gallery - 5925 N. Ravenswood Ave., Chicago, IL

About the Artists:

Hali Palombo is an American artist, writer, musician and shortwave radio enthusiast. She aims to immortalize what she calls “fall-betweens” - places and sounds often unheard, discarded and ignored - through video art, soundscape and song. Her 2020 record Cherry Ripe weaves CB radio dialogue, amateur radio broadcasts, optigan and organ into carefully assembled sound collage and music. She lives and works in the Midwest. http://www.halipalombo.com

DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult are sound and radio artists based in Paris. Both their solo and joint practices question the notion of diffusion, transmission and memory and are highly responsive to place. Their work includes sound pieces, installations, broadcasts, performances and publications and is often inspired by early transmission technologies and archives. Their current interests include, electromagnetic hums, old weather, the shruti box, beetles, and high frequency trading. http://bird-renoult.net

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Episodes 91 & 92

Hali Palombo GRAND DETOUR 32:06 GRAND DETOUR is a slow-scan television broadcast and soundscape. Named after an unincorporated census-designated place in Illinois, GRAND DETOUR depicts 32 desolate Midwestern scenes. Empty malls, weathered parking structures, shuttered toll booths and other cast-offs are revealed line-by-line via slow scan television, an increasingly obsolete method of image transmission via radio signal. The SSTV frequencies weave in and out of field recordings taken at the corresponding locations broadcasted, resulting in unnerving, hollow soundscapes punctuated by jarring bursts of data. Slow-scan television is a method of radio communication slowly growing obsolete - a suitable medium by which to portray the Midwestern decay in GRAND DETOUR. http://theradius.us/episode91 Radius Episode 91 is the first episode of DECADE. Radius DECADE series invites commissioned artists to examine slowness, calling attention to radio’s relationship to time. http://theradius.us/decade

Episode 91: Hali Palombo

“GRAND DETOUR” is a slow-scan television broadcast and soundscape. Named after an unincorporated census-designated place in Illinois, “GRAND DETOUR” depicts 32 desolate Midwestern scenes. Empty malls, weathered parking structures, shuttered toll booths and other cast-offs are revealed line-by-line via slow scan television, an increasingly obsolete method of image transmission via radio signal. The SSTV frequencies weave in and out of field recordings taken at the corresponding locations broadcasted, resulting in unnerving, hollow soundscapes punctuated by jarring bursts of data. Slow-scan television is a method of radio communication slowly growing obsolete - a suitable medium by which to portray the Midwestern decay in “GRAND DETOUR”.

DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult The Gold Line 17:27 In 2016 DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult began Antenna Gods, a composite art project on the use of radio waves by high frequency traders. In June 2018 they undertook a journey between the New York stock exchange, now a data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, West Chicago. The time it takes for data to be transmitted from one centre to the other via a network of microwave repeaters is 4.01 milliseconds, faster than the blink of an eye. These microwave repeaters are placed on towers that follow a geodesic path between the two exchanges. The actual route of the towers takes you over the Allegheny mountains of rural Pennsylvania and past many an Amish homestead, through the flat plains of Ohio, and in front of the immaculately mowed lawns and the blue ‘Make America great again’ flags of Indiana. Some of the towers are a requisition from the AT&T long lines network and can be found at the end of long dusty roads where the presence of new comers is instantly noticed. Some are new and specially commissioned for the purpose. They are unremarkable, just another shape in amongst the spikey cell phone antennas that litter the interstate. DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult’s ‘slow’ high frequency round-trip along what Chicago traders nick-name the Gold Line, took twenty-four days. Along the way we documented these outposts and their surroundings using image and sound. They learned about the past and present uses of these transmission towers that are both a material memorial to radio history, and a physical reminder of passing time. http://theradius.us/episode92 Radius Episode 91 is the first episode of DECADE. Radius DECADE series invites commissioned artists to examine slowness, calling attention to radio’s relationship to time. http://theradius.us/decade

Episode 92: DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult

In 2016 DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult began Antenna Gods, a composite art project on the use of radio waves by high frequency traders. In June 2018 they undertook a journey between the New York stock exchange, now a data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, West Chicago. The time it takes for data to be transmitted from one centre to the other via a network of microwave repeaters is 4.01 milliseconds, faster than the blink of an eye.

These microwave repeaters are placed on towers that follow a geodesic path between the two exchanges. The actual route of the towers takes you over the Allegheny mountains of rural Pennsylvania and past many an Amish homestead, through the flat plains of Ohio, and in front of the immaculately mowed lawns and the blue 'Make America great again’ flags of Indiana. Some of the towers are a requisition from the AT&T long lines network and can be found at the end of long dusty roads where the presence of new comers is instantly noticed. Some are new and specially commissioned for the purpose. They are unremarkable, just another shape in amongst the spikey cell phone antennas that litter the interstate.

DinahBird & Jean-Philippe Renoult's ‘slow’ high frequency round-trip along what Chicago traders nick-name the Gold Line, took twenty-four days. Along the way we documented these outposts and their surroundings using image and sound. They learned about the past and present uses of these transmission towers that are both a material memorial to radio history, and a physical reminder of passing time.